-
Interesting GPU Option
Reading the Resolve Forum, I saw this post that led me to this company. Apparently they write their own EFI ROMs for 3rd party GPUs for use in Mac Pros.
Best,
Andy -
2 Replies
-
This is over my short head.
Are they running some standard Windows NVIDIA cards (as in not For Mac) with just the correct NVIDIA driver?
One of the posters refers to using a GTX 570, nothing modded.
I have a Quadro 4000 in slave mode, but that’s the made for Mac version.
-
[Kevin Patrick] “Are they running some standard Windows NVIDIA cards (as in not For Mac) with just the correct NVIDIA driver?”
They are flashing standard third party Windows/Linux NVIDIA cards with a custom ROM that is EFI-friendly. Macs use EFI instead of BIOS to initialize hardware, and almost all third-party GPUs will only initialize with BIOS. That is why you can’t just buy any old GPU for a Mac Pro (that and drivers, but more about that below).
[Kevin Patrick] “One of the posters refers to using a GTX 570, nothing modded. “
The NVIDIA GeForce drivers recently released for Lion 10.7.3 reportedly will work with GTX5XX cards without any mods, though they do not show the grey Apple boot screen- they only start to work once OS X loads the drivers (login window). Then as noted in the thread I linked, they apparently don’t use all the available PCIe bandwidth. Getting an EFI-flashed card and installing the NVIDIA drivers gets you complete (if unofficial) GTX5XX support. At least according to the guys in that thread I linked.
Best,
Andy
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up